by Audrey Fein
A little-known Saudi Arabian prince with no art collecting history named Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud purchased the last known privately-owned Leonardo da Vinci painting for $450.3 million dollars in a 2017 Christie’s auction. Why? Was he influenced by his religion, a desire for power and influence, or something else entirely? I went to an expert in search of answers. In the 21st century, Saudi Arabia has been building its power through outward demonstrations of wealth, and it is possible that the Saudi Prince’s purchase is a reflection of that process.
Dr. Paul Chamberlin is a history professor at Columbia University who specializes in U.S. foreign relations and the Middle East. His first book is about the PLO in the 1960s and 70s, and he is now finishing a book on the Cold War in Asia. I spoke with Prof. Chamberlin for background information on Saudi Arabian history.
Q: What do you think of Prince Bader Bin Abdullah buying a da Vinci painting of Jesus as the Savior of the World, or Salvator Mundi?
A: You know, I think it’s important to not necessarily view everything through the lens of religion. I think it’s tempting to kind of look at a Saudi leader and say “well this clashes with his Sunni faith.” But if you reverse it, and say “Barack Obama claims to be a Christian, and how could you do these things in the country that might not line up with Christian values,” we understand that Obama is a complicated figure, and that religion is one of the ways he sees the world, but there are many other concerns. I think that’s probably true for just about any leader in the world. You don’t want to reduce them just to their religious faith.
Q: What do you think of the $450 million price tag?
A: Its impressive. I wish I had $450 million dollars to spend on a painting.
Q: Could you speak about the history of radical Islam in Saudi Arabia?
A: The Saudis are interesting because they, in contrast to most of the states around them, set up control of their own state largely without the cooperation of the European imperial powers. After World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapses, and the British and the French basically move into the region and carve up the Middle East into the map of what it looks like today. Empires have lots of different groups that live inside an empire, whereas nation-states tend to be more cohesive, and they are more focused on creating a single, national identity.
The Saudis are unusual because they were never really heavily colonized by the outside European imperial powers. That gives them a certain authority that a lot of these other surrounding states don’t have in the same way.
The way the Saudi state forms is out of this nexus, on the one hand of their control over the holiest Islamic cities, of Mecca and Medina. And on the other hand, you have all of these different tribes that exist in the interior. There is both tribal and religious authority in Saudi Arabia. It’s only after World War I, in the chaos that follows, that religious zealots seize control of Mecca and create the modern Saudi state. The Saudi state is built on this historic alliance between Ibn Saud’s descendants and Wahhabism. It’s this amalgamation of these two forces. The religion is built into the state in ways that are different than most states in the region. Of course the other key influence in Saudi Arabia is the impact of the American petroleum industry.
Q: The Salvator Mundi is going to be displayed in the new Louvre Abu Dhabi. What do you make of this?
A: Plenty of French rulers built the original Louvre. Were they really interested in the art? Or were they interested in what it represented to control the art? I see what Saudi Arabia is doing as a 21st century version of what French and other European rulers were doing back in this earlier era. Look at Washington D.C., there’s all these great museums. Every country wants to have that. That’s what powerful, influential countries do: they build museums, and demonstrate their power in outward ways.
Q: So do you think that this is purely a statement of power? Or is it something deeper?
A:I think there is a push from a lot of the states in the region with these vast resources to build their governments, and their states, into apparatuses with influence throughout the region and beyond. Saudi Arabia wants to make itself a place where people want to go. Part of that is tourism, and part of that is just raising its international profile. The construction of museums, resorts, and hotels and part of that. It’s interesting from my perspective as a historian to see new countries become the center of economic and political power. It’s no longer just Egypt and Syria in the Arab world. It’s really shifting in the 21st century. Now the focus is on the Gulf states, and oil is part of that.